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| Titre : | The Age of the Crisis of Man: Thought and Fiction in America, 1933-1973 |
| Auteurs : | Mark Greif |
| Type de document : | document électronique |
| Editeur : | [S.l.] : Princeton University Press, 2015 |
| ISBN/ISSN/EAN : | 978-0-691-14639-3 |
| Résumé : |
In a midcentury American cultural episode forgotten today, intellectuals of all schools shared a belief that human nature was under threat. The immediate result was a glut of dense, abstract books on the ÔÇ£nature of man.ÔÇØ But the dawning ÔÇ£age of the crisis of man,ÔÇØ as Mark Greif calls it, was far more than a historical curiosity. In this ambitious intellectual and literary history, Greif recovers this lost line of thought to show how it influenced society, politics, and culture before, during, and long after World War II. During the 1930s and 1940s, fears of the barbarization of humanity energized New York intellectuals, Chicago protoconservatives, European Jewish ├®migr├®s, and native-born bohemians to seek ÔÇ£re-enlightenment,ÔÇØ a new philosophical account of human nature and history. After the war this effort diffused, leading to a rebirth of modern human rights and a new power for the literary arts. CriticsÔÇÖ predictions of a ÔÇ£death of the novelÔÇØ challenged writers to invest bloodless questions of human nature with flesh and detail. Hemingway, Faulkner, and Richard Wright wrote flawed novels of abstract man. Succeeding them, Ralph Ellison, Saul Bellow, Flannery OÔÇÖConnor, and Thomas Pynchon constituted a new guard who tested philosophical questions against social realitiesÔÇörace, religious faith, and the rise of technologyÔÇöthat kept difference and diversity alive. By the 1960s, the idea of ÔÇ£universal manÔÇØ gave way to moral antihumanism, as new sensibilities and social movements transformed what had come before. GreifÔÇÖs reframing of a foundational debate takes us beyond old antagonisms into a new future, and gives a prehistory to the fractures of our own era. ** |
